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And how much did Britain holding the 13 colonies matter for that trade?
Or, in other words, was America opting out relevant, or was it merely a hickup in a single British Empire that pre-ACW was on the up, took a hit from the rebellion and generally losing the war, and then went right back to what it was doing? I personally have never seen them as very distinct; there was one British Empire, which was strong pre-ACW, and grew on to crazy after the Napoleonic wars.
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Feel free to make a proper argument worthy of discussion. "all the books I read say the British empire was teh greatest" isn't one.
The Spanish empire comes out as ethically better (subjugation of natives beats extermination of native) and better in terms of wealth extracted (mountains of gold and silver beat whatever timber, fur and hemp the British extracted).
Feel free to elaborate on your view of the matter...
Ah so we're now about economy and not empire?
The north American colonies weren't such a big part of it, which is why the British empire didn't collapse when they tea partied their way out but instead just went and grabbed another, way more valuable chunk of the planet in India.
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To the English economy, the thirteen colonies put together weren't worth one Barbados.
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If the point you are making is the term 'Greatest Empire' is subjective to viewpoint, I completely agree.
If you want to discuss the history of the English and Spanish speaking Empires and their relative merits over time in the Western Hemisphere, I am at your disposal.
@JodelDiplom - no, I'm done with this - your comments lead me to believe you aren't interested in discussion and I'm not going to trade insults.
I have read (but not seen proven - census records aren't exact) that Philadelphia had become the second-largest British city by the start of the Revolution and the British income from trade (including shipbuilding and shipping) made her economy comparable to France and Spain from before that time. That's with a smaller population and not as much good farmland, and in the case of Spain not nearly as many precious metals.
I use the concept of two empires as a convenient marker and certainly don't insist others should. It seems to me that there is a clear distinction between British settlement and British economic and military hegemony - the difference between, say, Pennsylvania and Bengal - and that what I call the second empire was less oriented to settlement and more toward pure economic benefits. There is also the whole shift in strategy, from controlling the North Atlantic by owning both shores, to a more generalized 'the oceans of the world are ours'. So it seems to me the character of the British Empire changed with the American Revolution (as any messy divorce will do).
Interestingly (to me at least) a number of Britons saw the AR coming. As early as the end of the Seven Years War there was debate over whether to demand the single sugar island of Mauritius or all of Canada (they were seen as worth the same!). The concern over taking Canada was that, freed of a threat from France, the colonials would refuse to pay for things like military protection and would drift away within a generation - which is pretty much what happened.
@Avernite - well, despite my age I wasn't around then, but I think both. I have read that wealth from trade underpinned the British economy (See Mahan, "Influence of Seapower Upon History" among others). Trade with the American colonies was very large, including raw materials (naval stores, sugar, tobacco, rice and indigo for a few) for all sorts of manufactured goods. There was a dip in trade revenues (and tax revenues from it) following the Revolution but it lasted maybe a few decades. The former colonies and Britain resumed trade, then Britain moved her interests east to India and southeast Asia. From what I remember, by the start of the French Revolution British trade had reached and exceeded pre-Revolution levels.
I have read (but not seen proven - census records aren't exact) that Philadelphia had become the second-largest British city by the start of the Revolution and the British income from trade (including shipbuilding and shipping) made her economy comparable to France and Spain from before that time. That's with a smaller population and not as much good farmland, and in the case of Spain not nearly as many precious metals.
I use the concept of two empires as a convenient marker and certainly don't insist others should. It seems to me that there is a clear distinction between British settlement and British economic and military hegemony - the difference between, say, Pennsylvania and Bengal - and that what I call the second empire was less oriented to settlement and more toward pure economic benefits. There is also the whole shift in strategy, from controlling the North Atlantic by owning both shores, to a more generalized 'the oceans of the world are ours'. So it seems to me the character of the British Empire changed with the American Revolution (as any messy divorce will do).
Interestingly (to me at least) a number of Britons saw the AR coming. As early as the end of the Seven Years War there was debate over whether to demand the single sugar island of Mauritius or all of Canada (they were seen as worth the same!). The concern over taking Canada was that, freed of a threat from France, the colonials would refuse to pay for things like military protection and would drift away within a generation - which is pretty much what happened.
It was easier to control the port of Barbardos than the entire Atlantic seaboard. John Hancock was a wealthy smuggler long before he was a patriot.
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Sugar, son, sugar. Caribbean was infinitely more valuable than North America.
Virginia and South Carolina did a brave job rallying around tobacco and indigo, but the Caribbean has evolved well past that. The sweet spice is where the money is at.
You sign the peace with those damned colonists when Dominica, St. Vincent, Grenada and Tobago have been taken by the French, placing a noose around Barbados. And the Dutch and Spanish fleets are also in the hunt. You can write off Jamaica to a Franco-Spanish invasion. But lose Barbados, and you lose your big money-maker and you're out of the West Indies altogether.
P.S. - Britain had no problem blockading off US trade after independence. And reciprocal threats and embargoes from the US did not bother them one bit. You want out? You're out.
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Call Lin Manuel Miranda and have him set that to music and there is your next big hit.
French made the right call sacrificing all those 'acres of snow' to keep one island of that sweet sweet sugar.
As a wise man once said:
As a wise man once said:
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At the time of the Pilgrims, sugar was indeed the big money crop of the Americas, followed by tobacco (as I understand it). But I believe settlement and development proved, over the next 50 to 100 years, to outstrip it. It is worth pointing out that sugar production depended on slave labor, and the number of slaves who could be used depended on importations of food. The US was a close, ready supplier of reasonably-priced foodstuffs, which meant that access to American food helped control the cost of making sugar. We see this in the Louisiana Purchase: when Napoleon could not subdue the slave revolt on Hispaniola (Haiti), he was willing to sell Louisiana, as it was the food supplier to the French sugar plantations in the Caribbean. During the American Revolution, Barbados and Jamaica were notably sympathetic to the Americans and protested the war to London. They needed cheap food from a nearby source, and the US was it - that's one big reason Britain couldn't cut off trade to the US for long and why smuggling was so rampant.
Not downplaying the value of sugar, just pointing out it some of the complexity.
This is taken from the Wiki:
By the time of the Revolution, population of the 13 colonies is estimated at 2.5 million, Britain about 8 million. By 1790, US population is estimated at 3 million(!).
And also from the Wiki:
I start from a predisposition to believe that trade is eventually more profitable than an extractive economy, not least because, once a resource is extracted, you have to move it and sell it - which is trade. So to the original point: I believe the British maritime trading empire produced more wealth than the Spanish extractive empire in a period from founding to the 1820s, after which point they both have suffered revolutions in the New World. Notably, Britain was able to use its diffuse maritime and financial strength to take up a new empire in India and southeast Asia but Spain's economy never recovered from the loss of her colonies.
Not downplaying the value of sugar, just pointing out it some of the complexity.
This is taken from the Wiki:
By the time of the Revolution, population of the 13 colonies is estimated at 2.5 million, Britain about 8 million. By 1790, US population is estimated at 3 million(!).
(from encyclopedia.com)
And also from the Wiki:
I start from a predisposition to believe that trade is eventually more profitable than an extractive economy, not least because, once a resource is extracted, you have to move it and sell it - which is trade. So to the original point: I believe the British maritime trading empire produced more wealth than the Spanish extractive empire in a period from founding to the 1820s, after which point they both have suffered revolutions in the New World. Notably, Britain was able to use its diffuse maritime and financial strength to take up a new empire in India and southeast Asia but Spain's economy never recovered from the loss of her colonies.
Other way. Tobacco comes first. It is easy to set up, with little or no investment. Any farmer with some land can start a tobacco plantation. He doesn't really need slaves, although in labor-starved America, slaves are inevitable.
Sugar, by contrast, is extremely hard to set up. Plant is sensitive, takes a huge up-front investment, it requires know-how, a lot of expensive machinery and factory space, and a steady stream of a lot of slave labor.
Tobacco is the "entry-level" business arriving colonists got into. Indigo is "next-level". Sugar is the most advanced, requiring the most capital. But also the most profitable.
North America simply didn't have the climate, soil and wherewithal for sugar, so never reached that degree of profitability. (Louisiana did, but that is post-independence). America did get a corner on tobacco, but that's because the Caribbean divested of it as it embraced sugar.
[ergo the travails of the poor white immigrant in the Caribbean - no land, no entry-level industry, no jobs but to work as hired hands for the rich plantation owners as clerks, managers & foremen. Sugar crowded out everything.]
Except coffee. Which exploded in the Caribbean as the number two crop in the mid-18th C. Coffee doesn't curtail sugar as it doesn't compete for space (coffee is planted in highlands). However, it is usually the same rich plantation owners.
The sugar-coffee combo were massive money-makers and made the Caribbean far more important than North America.
Cotton remained a distant backward crop until after independence. The American turn to cotton - what would become America's No.1 industry - quickly displaced all others and became dominant earner. Had the Brits anticipated that, they might have fought harder to retain it.
Much of pre-independence American trade with the West Indies was about processing molasses into rum, which was big business in New England.
Not so sure about food. If the Caribbean needed American food, the British wouldn't have been such asshats about it. For a half-century after independence, Americans pleaded, begged, offered everything (even went to war) to force the opening of trade with the British West Indies, but the British consistently refused. They might agree to importing American stuff to Britain, but not West Indies.
Time and again, Perfidious Albion signed treaties with gullible Yanks pretending to open commerce, and immediately suspended or canceled any and all clauses pertaining to the West Indies. This became a constant thorn of American foreign policy.
I doubt that very much. Accounts of the time belie it. The fortunes that went from the Indies to Spain were huge. There was even a massive decade-long war between Britain and France to see who would get to dip a toe in trade with Spanish America.
The strength of the British empire in the 18th C. was public debt, allowing the government to expend far more than their revenues on ships & war stuff than anyone else. Yes, the acquisition of debt depends on accumulated fortunes - fortunes made by Caribbean plantation owners, returning to England.
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The most interesting thing about the Spanish colonies in the US is how little they figure in US historiography. There are some excellent books and articles but they haven't influenced the mainstream narrative much. The standard story starts in the east and moves west with the settlers. Fortunately it no longer ignores the experiences of Native Americans living in the territories when the US moved in but it does usually omit the influence of Spanish colonization and trade (other than mentioning that the Spanish introduced horses). We get a story about the imposition of European standards and practices, such as landed property, on societies that didn't used to have them - which leaves out nearly 3 centuries of Native American interaction with another colonizer that shared quite a lot of those standards and practices. It also leaves out how the US dealt with those property rights when it incorporated Texas, California and territories inbetween. We get a story about US westward expansion that features two sides, which is undoubtedly better than just the one, but in much of the US southwest there were three.
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For the most part, gold and silver are not wealth. They are money.
That's because good & influential US historians get jobs at ivy-covered colleges & universities in the Northeast.
.....and because the winners write the history books.That's because good & influential US historians get jobs at ivy-covered colleges & universities in the Northeast.
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Unless they are former Wehrmacht generals
But they are the exceptions because they could have won, if they could determine the course of the war.
...according to history as written by the same former wehrmacht generals.Unless they are former Wehrmacht generals
But they are the exceptions because they could have won, if they could determine the course of the war.
The northeast, where it all (civilization in the USA) started, didn't have much imprint from earlier colonizers though. Aside from the natives having seen some white people and traded some trinkets with them?
Spanish exploration never went further north than Georgia, did it? Let alone settlement which was in Florida and Texas... And the French are part of USA history alright.
When you describe it like that (bolded part) it does sound very much like a niche topic though. Something for specialist historians. What's interesting about that for a general public?